CLC V6 coupes balance shaft affected range or not?

[DSM10000]

Aha fair enough, I'm not sure whereabouts you are but I live in Cumbria and I don't even remember the last time I've seen one round here!

We are in Wiltshire but close to the New Forest, Bournemouth etc

My Indie gets a lot of cars brought to him that others have tried to fix

 

[Eddy77]

There’s no Russian roulette about it. Simply find a car for sale, ask for the engine number before viewing, check it on the link already posted in this thread and if it is out of the range you are good to go. Very simple check to do. That’s how I found my clk. It was very low effort to do the checks.

 

[slade1]

If you can afford a repair that expensive on an older car by all means.. But I certainly can't what milage and year is your clk just out of interest?

Around 85K miles with many short trips. M272 whisper quiet after start up even when been standing for a few weeks.
The car serviced/MOT every year regardless of mileage, 5-6K per year.
'All the toys' more expensive electrical gremlins to fix.

 

[anderoo]

I don’t blame you for avoiding the risk, however I felt it worth mentioning that my 2006 c350 is right in the middle of the affected engine range, is currently on 102,000 miles, and has been a fantastic car. I probably shouldn’t be tempting fate like this, but there you go!

 

[anderoo]

As someone else mentioned, the hardest part may help actually finding one to buy. Out of interest I just had a look on autotrader and eBay, and couldn’t see any c350s from that era at all.

 

[BPD07]

It’s only Russian Roulette if you buy a car with an engine in the known range. Not all suffer from it, but nowadays, the cost of an engine out is beyond economic repair. Of course, every seller “hopes” their buyer hasn’t read about it. Good luck with your hunt.

 

[BTB 500]

FWIW the other fairly common issue with this engine is the actuator for the variable length inlet manifold breaking. The arm is only plastic, and a build up of carbon in the manifold will eventually lead to it snapping. The official fix is to replace the whole inlet manifold, although there are repair kits available on eBay etc. (with mixed reviews).

The car will still run if this happens, although eventually (after several months in our case) the EML will come on. Our car was on about 110k miles when it happened.

 

[Merclover2005]

I eventually found a very low milage post facelift 2004 C320 coupe that'd been owned since new by an older lady who garaged and babied it for 17 years. It has been a great car for the past 2.5 years and have used it on many long journeys around the UK. Not really had any issues other than a small oil and fuel leak that both cost pennies to fix. I always liked the idea of a CLC350 or just the 350 engine in general but as others said it was difficult finding one, as are any of the 320 or 350 v6 engines in the CLC or sport coupe body.

 

[poormansporsche]

I eventually found a very low milage post facelift 2004 C320 coupe that'd been owned since new by an older lady who garaged and babied it for 17 years. It has been a great car for the past 2.5 years and have used it on many long journeys around the UK. Not really had any issues other than a small oil and fuel leak that both cost pennies to fix. I always liked the idea of a CLC350 or just the 350 engine in general but as others said it was difficult finding one, as are any of the 320 or 350 v6 engines in the CLC or sport coupe body.

Nice one